Category — Uncategorized

One of the best things about the internet is that you have access to 5.35 billion brains. (That’s how many people were on the internet in 2024.) Even if you can’t remember something, such as the name of a book or a restaurant you ate at in 2007, chances are that someone else on the internet read the same book and recognizes the description and can provide a title or lived next door to that restaurant and can provide the name.

I’ve been trying to remember the name of a health center in Massachusetts. I know it was on one of three roads, though it’s gone now. I tried limiting my Google search to Internet pages when I knew it existed. (Did you know you can do this? It’s super weird to see what comes up.) I pored over Google Maps, Apple Maps, all sorts of maps… but I couldn’t find the name.

Not a problem because one of those 5.35 billion brains would remember for me. I posted it on an alumni board populated with people who all lived in the area when I lived in the area. A bunch of people said they knew exactly what I was talking about but couldn’t remember the name. But most people scrolled on by the question and didn’t answer.

It feels strange when the 5.35 billion brain collective fails to bubble up an answer. It makes me feel like maybe I imagined the health center. That makes more sense to me than that so many other people forgot it.

We’ve returned to our every other meal system, which is that I cook a meal on Monday (for example), and we split it in half and eat the other half on Wednesday. In between, on Tuesday and Thursday, is another dish, divided in half. And so on. So, instead of cooking every night, I’m now on for two nights and then off for two nights.

Dinner is the only meal I sit down and eat without distraction. I work as I eat breakfast and lunch, though Josh and I sit down and talk through dinner. So it’s kind of special in that way, and it’s obviously a longer meal to create and consume.

I think I would miss it if we switched to six snacks per day instead of three meals. I’m not sure how the kitchen math would work with that. Would each recipe yield 4 – 6 snacks? Would I only cook every third day? I’m not sure what is defined as a snack or a meal, only that people always want to get together for dinner, and no one ever asks us to get together for fifth snack.

But I think I may like having four small snack breaks per day and one leisurely dinner. I think I may be more of a snack person at heart. Are you?

I keep a very detailed TBR list with multiple tabs, and one of those tabs is dedicated to books printed outside the US that may or may not come to the US in the future. Every Saturday morning, I read Blackwell’s newsletter and add books I want to that list, and then I go through the Waterstones app and see which books they’re promoting. Every few months, I do a Blackwell’s shipment for UK books, using that list to choose what I want to order.

A few weeks ago, I saw that Janice Hallett would have two books coming out in 2025. One was called A Box Full of Murders. It would come out on February 6, 2025. The other was called The Killer Question, and it only listed the year — 2025. I typed them both into the spreadsheet with her last name and moved on.

This week, I was looking at the spreadsheet and decided to check whether the publisher had updated the listing with a concrete publication date. But when I searched for the title, it had disappeared. It was no longer on the Blackwell’s site. I couldn’t find it listed… anywhere. It vanished from book sites. I can’t find it on the Wayback Machine. My only note is the mysterious title in my spreadsheet added on August 12 at 7:44 am.

It’s a mystery about the queen of mysteries.

We are back from college drop-off. The twins have settled into new routines and new classes with old friends. And we have returned to our old routines, which are the same as last year but, in some ways, harder.

Last year, I was off-kilter because I didn’t know what to expect, and this year, I’m off-kilter because I know what to expect. It’s a different kind of off-kilter, where I can’t seem to settle down and find my rhythm, and I can’t let myself off the hook and allow myself to feel everything I’m feeling. A part of me (probably like you) wants to shake myself and say, “This is it. Accept it.”

So that’s where I am. Back. Sad. A little lost.

Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

This is a week that has been in my head for five years. We were told that by age five, the twins’ adjusted age should catch up with their actual age. Within five years, we wouldn’t see a difference between the Wolvog and ChickieNob and their full-term peers. Melissa of now says “bwaaaaah!” to that fact, noting that we still clap when they’re on the charts growth-wise at a doctor’s visit. They are small kids. You can tell they started out small and they’re still small. They are a very young five, developmentally. And that’s fine–I get babyhood that much longer. But the earnest Melissa of five years ago thought the whole world would look different on this date, when the two ages meshed and I thought prematurity would be chucked out the window.

Wasn’t that earnest Melissa so sweet? I just want to pinch her cheeks for a moment.

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